When I tried to run Linux on my AMD R9 380 recently (requiring amd-gpu pro) it didn't even boot unless I used nomodeset, but with nomodeset I had very few resolutions available for fullscreen, basically no driver in X.

They say 4.9 is a solid kernel for these things but..... I think the whole thing is a mess, the only thing you can do is find a kernel that works, and then stick to that.

@dryden: cheers for the reply. IT dev. always seems to be a mess - for no blindly obvious reason except reservation of control.Anyway, my personal, baseless thoughts and cynicism aside, my video card seems to work on kernel 3.16.* - though, I only use it for general display and do not perform extensive, specialised tests.I'm quite satisfied with it's performance. It would just be nice to upgrade to the latest version of any linux, without my notebook freezing.I tried installing a live version of Xubuntu but that froze during boot. I suspect it is a similar issue.

Clear out all the proprietary stuff. Reinstall xorg and firmware-amd-graphics. Maybe even update-initramfs. For vm's I've moved to bare metal, declarations made in xorg.conf.d need deleted or commented out, so that 20-fglrx.conf may be hanging you up.